Within the telecommunications industry, interconnection is the physical linking of a carrier's network with equipment or facilities not belonging to that network for the exchange of telecommunications traffic such as a voice call. The term may refer to a connection between a carrier's facilities and the equipment belonging to its customer, or to a connection between carriers. The interconnection between carriers may be direct or indirect, where direct interconnection is a connection between end carriers not involving any intermediate carrier; and indirect interconnection involves an intermediate carrier to transit traffic between the end carriers. For voice calls that are indirectly exchanged between end carriers, the carrier (provider) originating the call is called the Originating Provider, the provider transiting the call is called the Intermediate Provider, and the provider terminating the call is called the Terminating Provider. A call may be routed directly from an Originating Provider (e.g., Verizon Wireless®) to a Terminating Provider. Alternatively, the call may be routed indirectly from the Originating Provider to the Terminating Provider, by routing the call through an Intermediate Provider's network. Identifying traffic (calls) routing through Intermediate Providers has significant value to the Originating Provider (e.g., Verizon Wireless®).
Intermediate Providers, also known as Transit Providers, charge Minute-of-Use (MOU) rates for the traffic (calls) routing through their networks. Having a capability to identify traffic routing through Intermediate Providers may enable the Originating Provider (e.g., Verizon Wireless®) to mitigate some of these charges by implementing options to directly route traffic to Terminating Providers. Hence, a need exists to accurately identify traffic routing through an Intermediate Provider, where the Intermediate Provider may be an LEC Tandem, an Alternate Tandem Provider (ALT), or another third-party provider.